During the past year a number of publications related to Gramsci have been sent to us or brought to our attention by members of the International Gramsci Society. We are providing here a description of these publications. See also the bibliographical update by Guido Liguori in a separate section of this issue.
Antonio Gramsci. Cadernos do carcere. Volume I. Edited by Carlos
Nelson Coutinho with Marco Aurélio Nogueira and Luiz Sérgio Henriques.
Rio de janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1999.
This is the first of the six projected volumes of the new Portuguese translation
and thoroughly annotated edition of the Prison Notebooks. Although the
volumes are organized thematically, the text is based on Valentino Gerratana's
critical edition. The first volume, which gathers together Gramsci's notes on
philosophy, is divided into two sections. Under the title "Introdução
ao estudo da filosofia", the first section comprises the text of Notebook 11,
followed by notes on the same topic culled from various miscellaneous notebooks.
Similarly, the other half of this volume consists of the complete text of Notebook
10, "A filosofia de Benedetto Croce", followed by notes on the same topic from
different miscellaneous notebooks. In addition to a rich critical apparatus,
this volume contains a long introductory essay by Carlos Nelson Coutinho, a
detailed chronology of Gramsci's life, and some selected passages from Gramsci's
letters as well as from the notebooks that enable the reader to place Gramsci's
writings on philosophy and on Croce within the general context of the complicated
research and critical project of which the text of the Prison Notebooks
is the record. For a more detailed description of this Brazilian edition of
the Quaderni, see IGS Newsletter, no. 9 (March 1999).
Alberto Burgio and Antonio A. Santucci (eds.). Gramsci e la rivoluzione
passiva. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1999.
In November 1997, the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista organized an international
conference in Turin to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Gramsci's death. The
speakers included several prominent Gramsci scholars from various parts of Europe
and the Americas. Their presentations are collected in this volume.
CONTENTS: [END PAGE 35]
Alberto Burgio and Antonio A. Santucci: Premessa
Parte prima: Per la rivoluzione in Occidente
Parte seconda: La questione italiana
Raul Mordenti: "Gramsci e il problema della rivoluzione in Italia"
Giuseppe Carlo Marino: "Antonio Gramsci tra rivoluzione e fascismo"
Ruggero Giacomini: "'Valorizzazione della fabbrica' e americanismo"
Parte terza: Passato e presente
Joseph A. Buttigieg: "I 'subalterni' nel pensiero di Gramsci"
Domenico Losurdo: "Conflitto sociale, questione nazionale e internazionalismo. Rileggendo Antonio Gramsci"
Gianni Alasia: "Dall'Ordine Nuovo ai Consigli. Partecipazione e non delega"
Adalberto Minucci: "Gramsci, fordismo e democrazia politica"
Parte quarta: Al tramonto del secolo
Edoardo Sanguineti: "Il nostro Gramsci"
Aldo Tortorella: "L'ideale del socialismo in Gramsci"
Francisco Fernández Buey: "La politica come etica del collettivo"
Antonio A. Santucci: "Per la verità: intellettuali, classe, potere"
Isabel Monal: "Gramsci, l'utopia e la fine del secolo"
Jaime Massardo: "Gramsci in America latina. Questioni di ordine teorico e politico"
Fausto Bertinotti: "La feconda 'ambiguità' di un pensiero aperto"
Lorenzo Capitani and Roberto Villa (eds.). Scuola, intellettuali e identità
nazionale nel pensiero di Gramsci. Rome: Gamberetti, 1999.
The six essays included in this volume are based on the presentations that
were made at a day-long conference on Gramsci's writings about education and
the role of intellectuals held in Reggio Emilia in December 1997. Renato Zangheri
contributed the preface to this volume which also contains an introductory essay
by the editors and a small anthology of writings by Gramsci on schooling. The
volume contains the following essays:
Giulio Ferroni: "Lontano dal pedagogismo"
Giogio Baratta: "Gramsci nella società dell'apprendimento"
Joseph Buttigieg: "'Le forme cinesi': dalla scuola retorica alla scuola democratica"
Mario Alighiero Manacorda: "Stato, società civile, intellettuali: il
ruolo 'progressivo' della scuola" [END PAGE 36]
Fabio Frosini: "Riforma e Rinascimento: il problema della "unità ideologica
tra il basso e l'alto"
Giano Accame: "Gramsci e Gentile secondo A. Del Noce"
Dario Ragazzini: "Uomo individuo e uomo massa"
Peter Mayo. Gramsci, Freire, and Adult Education. London: Zed Books,
1999.
This book is excellent example of the valuable and interesting interpretations
and uses of Gramsci that are being produced by scholars and theorists working
in the field of education. Peter Mayo succinctly describes his approach to Freire
and Gramsci in the introductory chapter: "Both are engaged in projects which,
though different, were conceived of and carried out within the context of an
unmistakably left-wing politics of social transformation and, therefore, an
ongoing struggle against systemic, structural, and symbolic forms of oppression.
Both regarded forms of adult education as having an important role to play in
such a struggle. . . .There is a clear convergence between, and an element of
complementarity about, their thought, which I seek to demonstrate in this work."
CONTENTS:
I. Introduction
Antonio Gramsci--Paolo Freire--Existing Literature on Gramsci and Freire in Adult Education--
Transformative Adult Education
2. Antonio Gramsci and Adult Education
The Contested terrain: Hegemony and Education--Agency--Democratic Education--Agents of Change--Sites
of Practice, Social Relations and Content--Conclusion
3. Paolo Freire and Adult Education
Political Pedagogy--Agency: Liberation Theology and Marxism--Democratic Education--Agents of Change--
Sites of Practice and Content--Conclusion
4. Gramsci and Freire: A Comparative Analysis
Biographical and Contextual Comparison--Parallels--Differences--Conclusion: Towards a Synthesis
5. Some of the Limitations in Gramsci and Freire for a Contemporary Project
Gramsci: Class and Other Forms of Social Difference--Freire and Social Difference--War of Position:
Contestation and Cooptation--Information Technology--Conclusion
6. A Gramscian-Freirean Synthesis and Beyond
Commitment--Agency--Social Movements--Adult Educators--Cultural Production--History--Conclusion
7. Conclusion: When Might it Work? Transformative Adult Education in Context
Social Transformation: Limits and Possibilities--Pre-Revolutionary Context--Cultural Revolution--Some Concluding Remarks
Bibliography [END PAGE 37]
Maria Proto (ed.). Gramsci e l'Internazionalismo. Manduria-Bari-Roma:
Piero Lacaita
Editore, 1999.
This collection of sixteen essays is drawn from the proceedings of a conference
that was held in
Lecce in October 1997. The essays are preceded by the editor's brief introductory
essay.
CONTENTS:
I. Questioni preliminari
J. Cammett: "Messaggio dell'International Gramsci Society"
G. Liguori: "Edizioni, traduzioni, antologie"
W. F. Haug: "Imparare da Gramci per un nuovo internazionalismo"
F. Frosini: "Critica dell'economia ed economia critica nei Quaderni del carcere"
II. Nazionale-popolare, Internazionalismo, Cosmopolitanismo
R. Cotrone: "Mito e ragioni della storia nel pensiero di Gramsci"
L. Gorgoglione: "La 'Questione meridionale' in Gramsci tra il 1926 e i Quaderni del carcere"
G. Bonifacino: "Sul 'nazionale-popolare'"
R. Cavalluzzi: "Paradigmi internazionali, cosmopolitanismo, universalismo (da Leopardi a Gramsci e oltre)"
R. M. Plantamura: "Note sul concetto di cosmopolitanismo"
P. Voza: "Gramsci e l'egemonia, oggi"
III. L'Europa tra fascismo, fordismo e globalizzazione
A. L. De Castris: "Gramsci tra nazione ed Europa"
G. Baratta: "'Ogni storia particolare vive solo nel quadro della storia mondiale'"
A. Davidson: "Gramsci, folklore ed Autonomia"
S. Kebir: "Per una lettura politica di Gramsci"
A. Moscato: "Gramsci e lo stalinismo"
I. Barbarossa: "Per una critica dei moderni nazionalismi"
I. D. Mortellaro: "A proposito di Gramsci e globalizzazione"
IV. L'America Latina. Un'itinerario politico per la liberazione del continente
M. Proto: "Gramsci in America Latina tra Teologia della Liberazione e processi di globalizzazione"
F. Martinez Heredìa: "Egemonia, società civile e socialismo cubano"
D. Jervolino: "Riflessioni su Gramsci e la filosofia della Liberazione"
J. Kang: "Una lettera sul dibattito gramsciano in Paraguay"
Jacques Texier. Revolution et democratie chez Marx et Engels. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998. As is obvious from the title, this book does not deal directly with Gramsci. Indeed, it offers an extraordinarily rigorous analysis of the texts and the ninteenth-century contexts of Marx's and [END PAGE 38] Engels's writings on revolution and on the concept of democracy. Nevertheless, Texier's work should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand Gramsci's views on the 19th century which are the core of his understanding of revolutionary processes. It would, in fact, be accurate to say that this study constitutes a Gramscian reading of Marx and Engels.
Giuseppe Vacca. Appuntamenti con Gramsci. Rome: Carocci Editore, , 1999. This work is conceived as an introduction to the study of the Quaderni. Relying heavily on a chronological analysis of Gramsci's work, Vacca looks at the evolution of Gramsci's thought as an progressively radical repudiation of the direction in which the communist movement was being guided by Stalin. Vacca sets out to demonstrate that in Gramsci one finds a profound re-thinking of the Marxist tradition--so profound, in fact, that in the course of his exposition Vacca makes Gramsci appear to be a precursor of neo-liberlism or, at least, of "third way" politics.
CONTENTS:
Introduzione: Egemonia e democrazia
I. 1926-1937: la linea d'ombra nei rapporti con il Comintern e il partito
II. Togliatti editore delle Lettere e dei Quaderni
III. L'interpretazione dei Quaderni nel dopoguerra
IV. La "quistione politica degli intellettuali" e la concezione dello Stato. Nomenclatura dei Quaderni
V. L'anilisi dell'URSS staliniana
VI. La politica come egemonia
The Philosophical Forum, Vol. XXIX, nos. 3-4, (Spring-Summer 1998),
is a special issue on "Antonio Gramsci: Philosophy, Politics, and Culture" compiled
by guest editor Benedetto Fontana. In addition to a brief introduction by Fontana,
it contains the following aricles:
Renato Zangheri: "Notes on Gramsci and the Twentieth Century"
Benedetto Fontana: "Politics, Philosophy, and Modernity in Gramsci"
Maurice A. Finocchiaro: "Democracy, Philosophy, and Gramsci"
Richard Bellamy: "Gramsci and Walzer on the Intellectual as Social Critic"
Joseph V. Femia: "Gramsci and the Question of Transformation"
Nadia Urbinati: "Detecting Democratic Modernity:
Antonio Gramsci on Individualism and Equality"
Dante Germino and Meindert Fennema: "Antonio Gramsci on the Culture of Violence
and its Overturning
Anne Showstack Sassoon: "Family, Civil Society, State: Is Gramsci's Concept
of società civile still relevant?"
Kate Crehan: "'A Vague Passion for a Vague Proletarian Culture': An Anthropologist
Reads Gramsci"
Mauro Pala: "Gramsci's Spelling of Keywords: From Williams' and Gramsci's Theories
of Language to Cultural Hegemony"
Robert S. Dombroski: "A Note on Gramsci and Literature" [END PAGE 39]
Peter Gran. Subaltern Studies, Racism, and Class Struggle: Examples
from India and the
United Sates. Working Papers Series in Cultural Studies, Ethnicity and Race
Relations.
(Published by the Department of Comparative American Cultures, Washington State
University).
Of special interest to Gramsci scholars is Peter Gran's discussion of the
"subalternists and the Southern Question" in
the Indian context.
Wolfgang Fritz Haug. "Rethinking Gramsci's Philosophy of Praxis from One Century to the Next" in boundary 2; vol. 26, no. 2 (1999), pp. 101-118 This essay was first presented at the First Congress of the International Gramsci Society that was held in Naples in October 1997. An Italian version of it is published in Gramsci da un secolo all'altro (Rome: Riuniti, 1999)--see the review by Lea Durante in the IGS Newsletter, no. 9 (1999).
John D. Holst. "The Affinities of Lenin and Gramsci: Implications for Adult Education Theory and Practice" in International Journal of Lifelong Education. vol. 18, no. 5 (1999), pp. 407-421. In this article, Holst challenges the use to which Gramsci's ideas have been put by advocates of the new social movements. He compares Lenin's position to that of Gramsci's using textual analysis of Lenin's writings to reinforce the similarities between the two, and also as a means of locating Gramsci firmly within the Marxist camp. He rejects the somewhat naive attempts of exponents of the new social movements to expand the base of democracy within civil society, reminding us that the struggle for socialism is not "simply an incremental building upon liberal bourgeois freedoms" (p.420).
Kaoru Kataghiri. "La rivoluzione passiva in Giappone. La restaurazione Meji" in Studi storici; anno 39, no. 4 (1998), pp. 1148-1158. This essay is part of larger project in which Kataghiri is applying a Gramscian approach to an anlaysis of three crucial phases of modern Japanese history: the Meiji restoration, fascism, and the post-war period.
James Martin. "Gramsci and the Crisis of the Nation-State" in Talking
Politics: The Journal of the Politics Association, vol. 12, no. 2 (1999),
pp. 348-352 From the conclusion of the article: "So Gramsci cannot tell us all
we need to know about globalisation and the crisis of the nation-state. But
his writings, especially the theory of hegemony and the state, can alert us
to some of the important features of the current situation that we might otherwise
take for granted. In particular, his ideas remind us [END PAGE 40] that
globalisation is not just a matter of fact about which we can do nothing; it
is a political struggle that involves
winning our consent, and is yet to be resolved."
Frank Rosengarten. "Conferring on Gramsci" in Rethinking Marxism, vol. 11, no. 1 (1999), pp. 113-119 A review of the international conference held in Cagliari in Cagliari in April 1997 to mark he sixtieth anniversary of Gramsci's death and of the first Congress of the International Gramsci Society held in Naples in October 1997.
Tibor Szabó. "Gramsci konferencia Nápolyban" in the bulletin of the Hungarian Philosophical Society, A Magyar Filozófiai Társaság Hírek, 1998, no.1; pp. 34-35.
Gerry Groot (Center for Asian Studies, Univerity of Adelaide, Australia) is the author of the doctoral thesis: Managing Transitions: The Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work, Minor Parties and Groups, Hegemony and Corporatism.
ABSTRACT:
This dissertation examines the history and roles of China's minor parties and groups (MPGs) in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) united front between the 1930s and 1990s using Antonio Gramsci's principles for the winning and maintaining of hegemony. Gramsci advocated a "war of position," the building of political alliances to isolate existing state powers and win consent for revolutionary rule and transform society. Intellectuals were particularly valuable allies and the MPGs were parties of intellectuals. Between 1935 and 1949, the CCP used the MPGs and their ideological influence to help isolate the Nationalists politically.
After 1949, the united front worked for China's socialist transformation of the means of production and ideology. To overcome recurrent crises caused by its methods, the CCP instituted concessionary "passive revolution" measures including united front and MPG work to win back the support of intellectuals. Yet the re-stating of some MPG third road political positions contributed to the anti-Rightist campaign of 1957. The failure of the subsequent Great Leap Forward forced the CCP to adopt passive revolutionary methods again and the MPGs were revived during the Second Hundred Flowers period. They officially dissolved in 1966.
The post-Mao, post-Cultural Revolution revival of the MPGs as part of a new united front was again part of a passive revolutionary strategy to rebuild CCP hegemony. The MPGs were needed initially for their connections to old society intellectuals with technical, managerial and other skills. The MPGs also acted to re-legitimise these groups and to represent them politically. The corporatist forms of the MPGs, have, however led repeatedly to internal problems and dysfunctions inherent in corporatist structures. The CCP has used these problems as a means of control. Economic reform is now creating new socio-economic groups and the CCP is adjusting the united front and the MPGs to co-opt their representatives and deliberately forestall the evolution of an autonomous civil society and middle class which could challenge CCP rule. This has resulted in a new and expanding role for the united front, the MPGs and organisations representing the new interest groups.